For the past couple of months, my wife Jessica has been actively shopping around for new appliances for our kitchen – yes I finally “gave in” and we are doing a kitchen remodel. She finally found what she was looking for so this morning she called in to give them our credit card number so they could run the deposit for our order.
Turns out that the company she is buying the appliances from has a policy that prevents them from accepting credit cards over the phone. This means that if we want to buy the appliances from this establishment, we need to drive about 45 minutes to physically bring our credit card to conform to their policy. I offered several alternatives and the answer was still the same – unless we drove and physically handed our credit card, they wouldn’t accept it. This is a great example of the company doing what’s good for the company regardless of the impact it has on the customer. Needless to say, I’m already looking for alternatives because I don’t want to do business with companies that operate this way.
Yesterday I wrote a post about some of the challenges that we face at PL&L. Today’s experience really highlights the need for us to focus on creating intimacy and relationships with our customers. I certainly hope that nobody feels towards PL&L the way that I feel towards this appliance company. So if you ever start to feel like we don’t care about what is important to you, please let me know personally and I will do my best to address this do, please let me know because we’ll need to
